I7 4790k vs I7 6700k for gaming

[Middleton11]

Hey guys,

I recently acquired a new gtx 980 and plan to get another one to run in SLI. I'm planning on making a beast gaming PC, though I don't know whether to get a KRAIT SLI Mobo with an i7 4790k and 16gb ram, or go up to skylake and get the Z170 SLI with the i7 6700k with 16gb DDR4 ram.

I've heard that purely for gaming, the i7 4790k will last for years to come and a 6700k is not needed. Plus this would leave some money in my wallet to upgrade my old H60 cooler (2011), as I wouldn't upgrade to DDR4.

Seeing games like the witcher 3 which has system requirements of a recommended i7 3rd generation does slightly make me nervous about not going to Skylake

What are your thoughts?

Many Thanks

Middles

 

[DonkeyOatie]

I have an i7 4790K and expect it to last for several years. certainly to the socket after LGA1151.

What resolution/monitor configuration do you plan to game on?

 

[why_wolf]

haswell is 4th generation, skylake is 6th generation both are above the recs for Witcher 3.

It really won't make much of a difference save for the DDR4 or the more complete support of the M2 drives if you really want one.

 

[clairvoux]

I was in your situation 3 months ago. Personally I would go with skylake. You get DDR4 and faster per clock performance. Also Skylake will run slightly cooler than haswell, so your H60 will do the job well.

Or you could go the X99 route and get a 5820k and overclock it to 4.4Ghz, which is what I did. Where I live the 6700K was slightly more expensive than the 5820k, so for me, it was really a no brainer.

 

[Middleton11]

haswell is 4th generation, skylake is 6th generation both are above the recs for Witcher 3.

It really won't make much of a difference save for the DDR4 or the more complete support of the M2 drives if you really want one.

Yeah but it's just the thought that if recommended specs for games are already getting to 3rd generation i7's already then i'm sorta worried about future titles

 

[Middleton11]

I have an i7 4790K and expect it to last for several years. certainly to the socket after LGA1151.

What resolution/monitor configuration do you plan to game on?

At the moment only a 60hz 1080p monitor, though I'm planning on upgrading to a 4k screen fairly soon

 

[Middleton11]

I was in your situation 3 months ago. Personally I would go with skylake. You get DDR4 and faster per clock performance. Also Skylake will run slightly cooler than haswell, so your H60 will do the job well.

Or you could go the X99 route and get a 5820k and overclock it to 4.4Ghz, which is what I did. Where I live the 6700K was slightly more expensive than the 5820k, so for me, it was really a no brainer.

I don't really know much about the 5th generation series, I always presumed it was better for video editing etc due to all the cores rather than gaming?

 

[clairvoux]

The 5820K is Haswell, therefore 4th generation. 5th generation is Broadwell. The "5" in 5820K denotes a bigger than mainstream i7, but still Haswell. The X99 family starts at 6 cores and goes up to 8 cores, and they all start with 5XXX.

The 5820K, which is the cheapest X99 CPU usually goes for the same price or even lower than the Skylake 6700K, and it has 2 more cores. The downside is that they're only clocked at 3,3GHZ, but are very easy to overclock.

They're essentially the same as the mainstream i7, but they lack an integrated GPU, have slightly more cache per core, require DDR4 instead of DDR3, and have more cores.

 

[DonkeyOatie]

I was in your situation 3 months ago. Personally I would go with skylake. You get DDR4 and faster per clock performance. Also Skylake will run slightly cooler than haswell, so your H60 will do the job well.

Or you could go the X99 route and get a 5820k and overclock it to 4.4Ghz, which is what I did. Where I live the 6700K was slightly more expensive than the 5820k, so for me, it was really a no brainer.

I don't really know much about the 5th generation series, I always presumed it was better for video editing etc due to all the cores rather than gaming?

The i7 5xxxKs are capable gaming processors that also edit well due to the number of cores. I would not use one for what you say you want to do.

If you want 4K, then I'd rejigger things to try and afford a GTX 980ti from the start. Even overclocked, SLI 980 will be at the lower edge of good 4K and will get closer to the edge as games get more demanding.